Amazon has begun rolling out a new AI-powered facial recognition feature for its Ring video doorbells, introducing personalized alerts that identify familiar individuals approaching a home. The feature, called Familiar Faces, is now becoming available to Ring users in the United States following its announcement earlier this year.

The rollout places consumer-facing facial recognition technology directly into home security devices, prompting renewed attention from privacy advocates and lawmakers as Amazon expands AI capabilities within everyday household tools.

According to Amazon, the Familiar Faces feature enables Ring users to create a private, personal library of up to 50 recognizable faces, such as family members, friends, neighbors, delivery drivers, or household staff, captured by their doorbell camera. After a user labels an individual within the Ring app, the system applies facial recognition to identify that person in future detections.

Once enabled, the feature updates:

Amazon says users can edit labels, merge duplicate identities, or delete stored face data directly within the app. Unlabeled faces are automatically removed after 30 days, according to the company.

The company also says the feature allows users to manage alerts on a per-face basis, meaning notifications can be reduced or suppressed for certain recognized individuals, such as members of the same household.

Importantly, Familiar Faces is not enabled by default. Users must manually turn the feature on through their account settings.

Amazon states that facial recognition data associated with Familiar Faces:

Amazon also says that, from a technical standpoint, it would not be able to identify all of the locations where a particular person has been detected, even if such information were requested by law enforcement.

In response to questions from advocacy organizations, Amazon has emphasized that users retain full control over which faces are saved, labeled, or deleted.

Despite Amazon’s stated safeguards, the rollout has drawn criticism from consumer protection groups and lawmakers focused on biometric privacy and the expansion of facial recognition into residential spaces.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has raised concerns about facial recognition technologies becoming normalized in everyday environments such as private homes, arguing that their use raises broader questions around consent, data use, and long-term surveillance risks.

U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D–Mass.) has also called on Amazon to abandon the feature, citing concerns about biometric data collection, consumer privacy protections, and the lack of clear guardrails governing the use of facial recognition in consumer devices.

Ring’s rollout of facial recognition arrives amid ongoing scrutiny of Amazon’s broader approach to surveillance, data access, security practices, and relationships with law enforcement.

In previous years, police and fire departments were able to request access to Ring doorbell footage through the Ring Neighbors app by submitting requests directly to Amazon, according to prior reporting by TechCrunch. While Amazon later changed how those requests were handled, the company’s close ties between Ring and law enforcement have remained a point of concern for privacy advocates.

More recently, Amazon partnered with Flock Safety, a company that produces AI-powered surveillance cameras used by local police departments, federal law enforcement agencies, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). While Ring doorbells and Flock cameras operate as separate systems, critics have pointed to the partnership as part of a broader pattern involving AI-enabled surveillance tools linked to Amazon, raising concerns about privacy, data access, and the expansion of biometric technologies in everyday environments.

These concerns are further compounded by Ring’s past security and privacy failures. In 2023, Ring paid a $5.8 million settlement after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that employees and contractors had broad, unrestricted access to customer video footage over an extended period, and that the company failed to implement adequate security safeguards.

Additional reporting has also documented:

Together, this history is frequently cited by critics when evaluating the risks associated with expanding AI-based identification features in consumer home devices, particularly when those features rely on biometric data.

Due to state and local biometric privacy laws, Familiar Faces is not currently available in certain jurisdictions, including Illinois, Texas, and Portland, Oregon. Advocacy organizations note that state-level biometric regulations have played a key role in limiting where the feature can be deployed.

Q: Is Ring’s Familiar Faces feature turned on automatically?
A: No. The feature is disabled by default and must be manually enabled by the user within the Ring app.

Q: What kind of information does Familiar Faces store?
A: Amazon says the system stores encrypted facial recognition data associated with labeled individuals. Unlabeled faces are automatically deleted after 30 days.

Q: Does Amazon share facial recognition data with law enforcement?
A: Amazon states that facial recognition data from Familiar Faces is not shared and that it cannot provide cross-location tracking data even if requested.

Q: Where is the feature currently unavailable?
A: Due to biometric privacy laws, Familiar Faces is not available in Illinois, Texas, or Portland, Oregon.

The rollout of facial recognition in consumer devices like video doorbells illustrates how AI capabilities are moving from enterprise and government settings into everyday home technology.

For consumers, the appeal is closely tied to security and situational awareness. Knowing whether a person at the door is a trusted family member or an unknown visitor can change how people respond — particularly when they are not home and relying on alerts to monitor their property. In that sense, features like Familiar Faces are framed as an extension of home security rather than simple convenience.

At the same time, the technology raises privacy questions that extend beyond the homeowner. Doorbell cameras can capture faces of neighbors, delivery workers, passersby, and even children or pets moving through shared or public-facing spaces. As facial recognition becomes embedded in these devices, it prompts broader questions about where expectations of privacy begin and end in residential environments.

These concerns are amplified by the nature of biometric data, which is difficult to change or revoke once compromised. Facial recognition has already been widely adopted in smartphones and other consumer devices, often without sustained public scrutiny. Yet companies offering those features have also faced repeated data breaches, fueling skepticism about how securely biometric information can be stored and protected over time.

Taken together, Familiar Faces highlights a familiar pattern in consumer AI adoption: technologies designed to improve safety and usability also introduce new tradeoffs around data security, consent, and long-term governance. As AI-enabled identification becomes more common at the front door and beyond, how companies manage biometric data — and how clearly users understand those practices — will continue to shape trust in these systems.

Editor’s Note: This article was created by Alicia Shapiro, CMO of AiNews.com, with writing, image, and idea-generation support from ChatGPT, an AI assistant. However, the final perspective and editorial choices are solely Alicia Shapiro’s. Special thanks to ChatGPT for assistance with research and editorial support in crafting this article.